I took a deep breath. I knew the next thing my mind would drift to would be various good times with Sandra. I’d crawled up here to check on her as much as Gorski. I tried to focus.
Gorski got the wrong idea from my thoughtfulness. He seemed to think I was displeased with his answer. “I think the gravitational forces are messing with the factory’s internal processes,” he said, sounding apologetic.
“Makes sense,” I said. “We’ve never tried to make the factories eat anything so big and tough while accelerating laterally. What do you think the yield will be in say…four hours?”
“At least a metric ton of fresh constructives, sir.”
I wanted to nod again, but stopped myself. “That should be enough.”
“Can I ask what they will be used for, sir?”
“To make a whole lot of little black arms,” I said.
He strained his eyeballs to look at me. “What will these arms do, sir?”
“Deploy ordinance. I’ll fill you in soon. Keep the factories churning.”
I left him then. Gorski seemed happier now with his sad lot in this war, which had been part of my purpose in visiting him. Crazy Colonel Riggs had a plan, and all would be well. Anything was better than thinking you were just a bug-splat on the outside of a fleeing cruiser. Gorski now knew he wasn’t a casualty waiting to happen. He was part of a big plan to fix everything. Who wouldn’t like that promotion?
I knew I really should head down into the cruiser, but I went to the medical brick next where we stored our turnips. What I found there enraged me.
The coffins had been left aligned lengthwise. Normally, this would not have been a big deal. But due to the centrifugal forces of acceleration, the boxes should have been aligned with their backs flat against the angle of motion. I rushed to Sandra’s box and looked inside. There she was, crumpled up at the bottom of the pod, in a folded position. She looked like a corpse stuffed into a garbage can.
I stomped on the call button for the med-tech, Carlson. He wasn’t in the brick. Probably, he’d grown tired of the G-forces himself. He showed up in a hurry when the realized Riggs himself was calling him.
When Carson came through the airlock, he was all artificial sweetener. “Sorry sir, just stepped out for a moment. Let me get over there, it’s a little hard to maneuver-”
That was as far as he got with his bullshit before I had a handful of his suit in my hand. I had leapt, defying the intense gravity to get to him. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. He wasn’t wearing a battle suit, and the old ones had a fair amount of give in that area. My other hand clamped onto a ring in the ceiling for support. I yanked him out of the airlock and sent him flying.
Carlson almost landed on his helmet. That might have been bad, as I wanted him conscious. I let myself go and dropped like a stone on top of him. I made sure my boots missed his belly, but it was a close thing.
“I don’t-I don’t understand, sir!” he shouted.
Carlson didn’t go for his beamer, which was a good thing for him. At that moment I wanted an excuse to burn or punch a hole through him. He didn’t give it to me, so I hauled him up and shoved his nose into the nearest tiny window to see the state of his charges.
“There’s something wrong with your turnips, corpsman!” I shouted.
He made a strangled sound of shock. It wasn’t just me squeezing the back of his neck, either. “I didn’t realize. It must have just happened. I’m sure-”
I popped off his helmet and squeezed his neck hard. It might have killed a normal man, but I knew he had nanites in there to repair the tissue damage. “I don’t want excuses. Fix them.”
I released him. Carlson crawled to the controls and worked them feverishly. I watched as the units rotated, putting the bottom floor of every unit toward the back wall of the brick.
“Now, help me get them into a comfortable position.”
We worked for the next half hour. I discovered two of them hadn’t survived. Sandra-fortunately or not-was one of the five survivors.
“You almost killed my girlfriend from neglect,” I told him.
He looked at me with frightened eyes. “I didn’t think the G-forces would be this bad, sir. When I went below, into the cruiser, it didn’t feel so strong.”
“I told you to take care of them. It’s been hours. You’ve been hiding below. You’ve killed two good men.”
“Sir,” said the corpsman, regaining some of his composure. “You have to realize, these people are already dead.”
I stared at him. “I refuse to accept that. For dereliction of duty, I’m busting you to private. Fortunately for you, I can’t afford an execution right now. I need every corpsman I have, even you.”
I left him in the medical brick, sputtering. When I was back inside the cruiser, I tried to calm down. Maybe I had been too hard on him. How might I have reacted if Sandra hadn’t been one of the ‘turnips’? What if it had been anonymous marines I had never met?
I wasn’t sure if I’d made a mistake or not, but I was sure Private Carlson was going to take his job more seriously from now on.
21
I had about three hours to kill before we hit the ring and exited the system. I figured what the hell, now was as good a time as any to talk to the Centaurs a bit more. This would be our last opportunity on this trip. Once we went through the ring, we would be out of contact. Whether we lived or died on the way home, it would probably be years before anyone got another chance to visit this system.
We had some data on the Centaurs coming in now. They were working to seal up the hole we’d put in their artificial sky. That meant some of them had to have survived. The news I thought was even better was the disposition of the Macro forces. We saw nothing to indicate they had moved on the thirty-odd orbital structures in the system. Apparently, our actions and theirs had not constituted a breach in whatever agreement the Macros had with the Centaurs. Either that, or the Macros were busy chasing us and hadn’t gotten around to exterminating the Centaurs yet.
We had a communications module on the hull of the cruiser by now. I directed its parabolic dish toward the satellite we’d half wrecked and beamed a tight message to them. I wasn’t sure if anyone was listening, but it was worth a try.
I didn’t get an answer for quite a while. Due to the growing distances alone, I wasn’t too surprised. It took a minute or two just for the signal to reach them. Even then, they might well have better things to do than talk to me. After all, half their population or more had just been asphyxiated.
I’d almost given up when the com-link blinked. They were calling me back. I turned on every recorder we had handy and started the conversation. Due to the distance, I figured I had time to make a big speech with each transmission. Normal conversation was difficult with minute-long silences between each statement.
Their message came in first, however, and the contents surprised me. “The sky has opened and received the bounty of our bodies. The best of our Herds now float among the stars. There is no wind in their fur, but there is sunlight and honor. We gift them proudly to the sky.”
Again with the sky and their honor. As a very direct person, these people thought in circles from my point of view. I had respect for them, however. They believed what they believed and they were very willing to die for it. I had to wonder exactly what the nature of their agreement with the Macros was, but I didn’t want to waste my limited time satisfying curiosity. They might hold more vital information.
“Honorable herds,” I said, not knowing how else to address them as a group. “We of the human herds have done the impossible: we stormed and took two ships from the machines. We command one of their cruisers now, and we are leaving your star system. We ask for any information you may have that can help us defeat the machines. We ask if you will answer our questions.”